


Lights Out

by lilac-vode (MollyMerula)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, No Romance, duckysquad acquires their melee specialist thanks to a bowl of pudding, more duckysquad cadet adventures, this one is just ducky and blender (but he's not named blender yet)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-19 00:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22769263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyMerula/pseuds/lilac-vode
Summary: A midnight power outage introduces cadet Ducky to a new friend. Who could it be? (hint: it's Blender)
Relationships: Original Clone Trooper Character(s) & Original Clone Trooper Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Lights Out

The mission seems easy enough. It’s a simple in-and-out retrieval. He’s studied the maps and found the best route. No backup, but that’ll make it easier to stay undetected, if it’s just him.

Just Ducky, on his way to the janitor’s closet to get cleaning supplies. Because one of his batchmates, not naming names, has dropped an entire bowl of contraband pudding on the floor of their shared quarters.

It’s late, and they’re not even supposed to be awake right now, let alone using stolen supplies to clean up stolen pudding. But as a council, he and his batchmates have weighed the consequences, and they have agreed it would be worse to let someone find them out in the morning than to risk being captured covering their tracks, so here he is.

Ducky looks around before slipping through each doorway. He seems to be more or less the only one awake, but still he flinches at the _skff_ of each door opening – it sounds so much louder than it does in the daytime. He’s almost there, though – he’s entering the last corridor. Then there’s one more door, and the closet will be on his left. But when Ducky is partway down the corridor, the lights go out, plunging the gleaming white hallway into blackness, and he freezes.

Outside, eerily, the rain stops. Ducky can only remember three, maybe four times in his life that it hasn’t been raining on Kamino. It’s unsettling to him – and not just because it’s unusual. Without the sound of the rain in the background, the silence crowds in on his eardrums, pressing into his head. So he hums a little, very softly, just to give his ears something to hear as he continues down the hall, keeping one hand against the smooth surface of the wall.

Ducky comes around a curve of the hall, and then he stops. His eyes are beginning to get used to the darkness, and he can just make out the shape of something – no, someone – on the ground ahead. He squints through the dim, moving a little closer.

“Hey?” he calls softly, and the figure’s head snaps up. Ducky can see better now: it’s a cadet around his age, sitting with his back to the wall. His eyes are wide, his hands a little unsteady, but then he sees Ducky and relaxes a little. “Hey,” he replies as Ducky crouches next to him.

“My name’s Ducky,” Ducky says, after a moment. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t have one, not yet,” the other cadet says. “My number’s thirty-eight thirty.”

Ducky nods, tracing the number out in his mind to make sure he remembers it. He and his batchmates might have their names already, but for cadets their age, it’s not uncommon not to.

“I’m supposed to be bringing back cleaning supplies,” Ducky says, “but it looks like we’re stuck in here for a while, with the power out.” The facility’s smooth automatic doors look sleek, but when they’re unpowered, the lack of a handle makes them impossible to open manually, which has always struck Ducky as tactically suboptimal, if not potentially disastrous.

“How’d you end up in here?” Ducky tries to ask, but before he can get an answer, there’s a clap of thunder so loud, so sudden that both boys grab for the other’s hand in the same instant, then look at each other and fall into fits of snickers as the relief hits and they calm down. The rain begins again – soft at first, but soon growing to the pounding downpour they’re so used to hearing.

“I couldn’t sleep,” the other cadet says finally, “and I hate being alone in the dark, so I thought I’d come out here, where it’s light. Except now it’s not light here either,” he says, with a comically exaggerated sigh.

“But at least you’re not alone,” Ducky points out, and the cadet smiles. “Hang on, though – why _were_ you alone? What about the rest of your group?”

The other boy looks down. “They’re gone. Passed all the tests this week and got sent along to the next stage of their training. I’m the only one who didn’t make it, so I’m waiting to be reassigned. Our group instructor has had about enough of me.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Ducky says thoughtfully, “but I’ll put in a good word for you with our own instructor tomorrow. She keeps saying we need to round out our skillset as a group, and I’m sure you have skills to offer. And it wouldn’t be the first time we took in a straggler from another batch,” he adds. Somehow his group has a habit of growing in unexpected ways.

The cadet nods, looking hopeful, and as he opens his mouth to thank Ducky, the power comes back on, almost blinding them both. Suddenly remembering his mission, Ducky makes straight for the door, and to his relief it opens. The other cadet keeps watch while he digs mops and bottles out of the closet. Having retrieved what he needs, Ducky starts back down the corridor, then stops and turns to look at the cadet, who is hovering near the door.

“If you’re sure nobody will miss you,” he says, “you can come and spend the night with us. Unfortunately I can’t offer you pudding, but we’re good company all the same.”

Before he’s even finished speaking, the cadet is following him down the hallway. Together they make it all the way back without being seen, and after a quick introduction and explanation as to why in the world a simple task took so long, Ducky and Cadet Thirty-Eight Thirty help the others clean the floor until it’s almost suspiciously shiny. Then, exhausted from the day’s training and additional escapades, they climb into their bunks. There’s some excited whispering between the new boy and the others, but soon even that dies down as they drift off to sleep. Ducky lies awake a little bit longer, recounting the night’s events in his mind. He counts the excursion as a double success. After all, it’s not every mission you come back with a new brother.


End file.
